Transcendentalism Defini&on •  From La1n, meaning “passing over” or a “climbing beyond” •  Literary movement in New England beginning with publica1on of Emerson’s Nature in 1836 and las1ng un1l beginning of Civil War in 1860 •  Some1mes called the “American Roman1cs”—
what did they want to pass over or climb beyond? Ralph Waldo Emerson Sources of Transcendentalism •  German philosopher Immanuel Kant idealism—world of thought and ideas as opposed to the material world Sources of Transcendentalism •  Bri1sh Roman1c Poets
William Blake (1757-­‐1827) Lord Byron (1788-­‐1824) William Wordsworth (1770-­‐1850) Percy Shelley (1792-­‐1822) Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-­‐1834) John Keats (1795-­‐1821) Sources of Transcendentalism •  Eastern mys1cism •  Thoreau, in par1cular, read Hindu sacred wri1ngs, recently translated into English Sources of Transcendentalism Unitarianism •  Form of Chris1anity that stresses the unity of God •  Denies the doctrine of the Trinity •  Emphasizes primacy of reason and individual conscious in ma`ers of faith and morality •  Saw Jesus as a great man rather than the son of God Transcendental Club •  Small group of friends from Boston and Concord •  Began mee1ng same year that Nature was published •  Included Bronson Alco`, Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Thoreau, etc. •  Published The Dial (intellectual and literary magazine) between 1840 and 1844 What did they believe? •  Divinity of human beings (everyone partook of the spark of the eternal divine) •  Unity of God (God seen everywhere immanent in the Crea1on, as the “Over-­‐Soul”—Emerson’s term—that animated all of us) •  Humans commune directly with Divinity, can receive inspira1on from God without the media1on of priests or printed texts of religion •  Signs of eternal truth everywhere present in nature. Reading these signs a way to receive divine inspira1on •  Since so much lee up to the individual, the individual is valued highly—
much division of opinion, growth, and change in the philosophy. Consistency not important In the words of Emerson from 1842 lecture, The Transcendentalist The transcendentalist adopts the whole connec1on of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspira1on, and in ecstasy. . . . It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the skep1cal philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas . . . which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intui1ons of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms. The extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man’s thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature, in Europe and America, to that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intui1ve thought, is popularly called at the present day Transcendental…